The Rider of Golden Bar

by William Patterson White

"Yes, told me, sure. 'If the marshal wants me,' says he, as he loped past, 'tell him I've gone to Hillsville.'"

Here was an odd thing. Jack Murray knew where he stood with the powers that were and consequently knew that the marshal would not want him for the shooting. Yet here was Jack Murray not only leaving town hastily, as though he feared capture, but taking pains to leave word where he was going. The two facts did not fit. True, a gentleman seeking to mislead possible pursuers might lie as to where he was going. In which case such a gentleman would not take a trail like the Hillsville trail—a trail visible from Golden Bar for almost five miles in both directions. But if a person wished to be pursued——

"I think I can see his dust still," said the hostler helpfully, pointing toward the spot where the Hillsville trail entered a grove of pines five miles out.

"I think I see it too," declared Billy grimly, and went hurriedly to the hotel for his rifle and saddle.

Hazel Walton, jogging along the homeward way, was overtaken by a horseman. He nodded and called, "'Lo," as he galloped by. She returned his greeting with careful courtesy. But she scowled and made a little face after his retreating back. She did not like Jack Murray. She never had. The man had repelled her from the moment she first set eyes on him.

It is human nature for one to take an interest in the movement of a person one dislikes. Hazel wondered where Jack Murray was riding so fast. For it was a hot day. Her wonder grew when, twenty minutes after he had passed from sight, she perceived by the hoofmarks that he had left the trail and turned into a dry wash. She knew that the wash led nowhere, that it was a blind alley, a cul-de-sac ending in a rock-strewn, unclimbable slope that was the base of Block Mountain. This wash was a good two miles beyond where the trail entered the grove of pines five miles out of Golden Bar.

Beyond the wash the trail wound up the side of a hill. At the crest of the hill the off mule picked up a stone. Hazel set the brake, tied the reins to the felley of a wheel and jumped to the ground. The stone was in a near fore, and jammed tight. After ten minutes hard hammering and levering with her jackknife she had the stone out.

As she released the foot from between her knees and straightened her back, her gaze swept along the back trail. She saw only sections of trail till it passed beyond the grove of pines five miles out of town. The grove was now three miles behind her. The wash into which Jack Murray had ridden was distant not half a mile. The land on either side of the wash had once been burnt over and had grown up in brush and scraggly jack pine.

Of the pines and spruce that had once covered the ground surrounding the wash, but one tall gray stub remained. The eye of the beholder was naturally drawn to this salient characteristic of the landscape, She saw more than the stub. She saw Jack Murray's horse tied to its bole. There was something queer about the horse's head. Whereas Jack Murray's horse when it passed her on the trail had been a sorrel of a solid color, the head was now whitey-gray.

Hazel was not of an abnormally inquisitive nature, but that a horse's head should change color within the space of half an hour was enough to make any one ask questions. Ever since she and her uncle had come to realize that some one was rustling their cattle, neither of them ever left home without field glasses. Hazel pulled her pair from beneath the seat cushion and focused them on the odd-looking horse.